Chaperone DOs and DON'Ts

Unlike the Academic Bowl, the chaperone is not allowed to develop practice questions or facilitate discussion about the assigned books for the competition. Students will be expected to facilitate their own discussion about the assigned books and develop their own study materials. The chaperone will be asked to sign a Chaperone Participation contract online.

If it is discovered that a chaperone helped develop practice questions or commits other violations of the participation contract, the team will be kicked out of the competition and suspended for the following year. Parents and other school officials are also asked to maintain the integrity of the competition by not “coaching” the players.

Here are some of the things that a chaperone can and can't do to help their teams prepare for the Gallaudet's Battle of the Books competition.

Things that a Chaperone CAN do:

a) Go through the Rules and Guidelines manual to make sure everyone understands the format of the match.

b) Set a time for the team to read/discuss the book for no more than an hour daily during school hours.  Students are welcome to meet on their own (at their request) before or after school hours in the classroom or at another location. 

c) Develop a practice match using questions that do not come from an assigned book from this year. This can help the students feel comfortable with the match format before the actual match.

d) Send a letter home to students' parents about the competition and ask them to encourage their child to read the books on their own. Also, inform parents that they are not to read the books to their child.

 e) Help students with vocabulary words that they struggle with while reading the books.

Things that a Chaperone CAN'T do:

a) Read from the books to the students.

b) Develop potential questions from the assigned books for this year's competition.

c) Facilitate discussion about the books in this year's competition.

d) Ask parents or other staff members to help the students study for the competition.

e) Give more than one hour of school time daily for students to read/discuss the books.

f) Place a student who is reading at a grade level higher than the group that he/she has been assigned to.